KPN quits ISDN after almost 30 years and starts closing lines.

KPN has started to shut down most ISDN lines. ISDN was introduced almost thirty years ago and made it possible to call and surf the net over one telephone line. The provider announced its intention to stop using the technology as early as 2017.

ISDN (Integrated Services Digital Network) made it possible to make calls and surf the Internet at the same time. The technology became popular in the mid-1990s, but nowadays there is much better technology on the market than ISDN, says director of the business market Marieke Snoep of KPN versus the NOS. We want to take customers into the new world of broadband.

The shutdown of the ISDN lines starts today. This means that companies that still use the technology can be closed down. If it turns out that a company is unreachable, it can contact KPN. We will then ensure that they can be reached on the same day, but also that they will definitely go to another solution.

Number of connections drops

Although it was announced as early as 2017 that KPN would stop using the technology, several tens of thousands of companies are still using ISDN. The technology is used for, among other things, calling, internet and alarm systems.

At its peak there were 1.5 million ISDN consumer connections. Telecompaper reported in mid-2018 that the number of PSTN ISDN and WLR lines decreased by 5.5 percent. This brings the total number of such connections below 500,000.

Now that KPN has stopped using ISDN, daughter brands Tele2 and Telfort are also doing so. This means that customers of these brands have to look for another way to be reachable. KPN expects that by April 1, 2020 at the latest, the plug will definitively be pulled out of commonly used variants of ISDN.

As of 1 October 2021, the provider will also be discontinuing ISDN variants with more than one channel. These are ISDN15, ISDN20 and ISDN30.